Sky Blue Blog

Market East

When I grew up
down in Franklin, we'd often drive up to Indy. I loved riding in the Ford
Country Squire station wagon (sitting in the front seat, no seatbelts while my
father smoked unfiltered Pall Malls).

When we went
to see the Indianapolis Racers who had just acquired that young Canadian kid
Wayne Gretzky, we'd enter the downtown via the glorious elevated expressway ramp
that took us right under Market Square Arena. I hold that experience of
journeying through that gateway into the "big city" very dear.

Hugh Vandivier

Elvis sang here: The corner of Alabama and Market streets holds only the faint memory of that culture now.

If my mom
wanted to make back-to-school shopping extra special, we'd forego the outdoor Greenwood
Shopping Center and drive all the way up to Lafayette Square Mall to search for
shrill '70s fashions at places such as Sears, J.C. Penney, Block's Department Store, Lazarus or
L.S. Ayres & Company.

I thought about
those places in light of the city's recent big announcement. Mayor Ballard has
proclaimed the near, near east side of downtown a cultural district, affixing
the moniker Market East to join the likes of Broad Ripple Village, the
Canal & White River State Park, Fountain Square, Indiana Avenue,
Massachusetts Avenue and the Wholesale District.

So on a sunny
spring day last week, I walked to the City Market for lunch along where MSA
once proudly stood, and I pondered the exact same thing as the Indianapolis Star's Erika D. Smith:
What's so cultural about the 14-blocksof our newest cultural district? The current tally
stands as such:

· The Old City Hall, or The
Hall, finally functioning as an urban planning hub for the Indianapolis
Department of Metropolitan Development (DMD).

· The newly refurbished Indianapolis City Market, with a YMCA, bike
hub, Tomlinson Tap Room and The Platform, a
neighborhood planning space for Local Initiatives Support Corporation.

· The mostly completed and already filling up Artistry, the $31 million conversion of
a vacant former Bank One operations center into five-story mixed-use bliss
with 258 apartment units.

These stand as
exciting transformations, but other than being kissed by the Indianapolis Cultural
Trail: A Legacy of Gene and Marilyn Glick, I'm not seeing much culture there yet.
Oh, wait, there is an art gallery in Artistry. Check.

To be fair,
the designation comes hot on the heels of much anticipated development
announcements that took so long that the city had to pave the MSA footprint. The
long-awaited $81 million Market Square Tower should provide a nice bookend to
the JW Marriott, but it drew
a yawn from David Hoppe as losing "an opportunity for Indianapolis to make
a major cultural statement." Then, there's the proposal for a $30 million
global distribution HQ for Cummins. Maybe there's some potential there
considering J.
Irwin Miller's contributions to Columbus, Indiana, architecture. However, the jury's out on whether current
Cummins' management shares the same artistic devotion.

Hugh Vandivier

The Artistry's Cole-Noble Gallery reflects the development's focus on making culture a cornerstone of its urban mixed-use space.

There is,
however, great hope that the City-County
Council redesign competition from Sky Blue Window's engine, the Central
Indiana Community Foundation, will add some much needed life to the footprint
of the old Marion County Courthouse. Methinks this has cultural planners
speculating on what Indy's equivalent of Chicago's Millennium Park and "silver
bean" might look like.

So I caution
city planners that if you're going to designate something a cultural district,
make damn sure that you do a better job than you did with the Convention
Center, which displays a startling lack of art or culture in its renovated
halls.

I still find
all this sad for the Lafayette Square Area, passed up once again in vying for
its dream of rebranding itself the "International Market," which the city should
have made a cultural district first.

Why? Because
unlike Market East, which needs to manufacture culture, culture is already
embedded in the LSA. Its residents speak more than 70 languages, and at least
according to the New York Times it's "where the world
comes to eat." I'll put up Saraga International Grocery against any chain they
throw on the first floor of Market Tower, just for the exploration factor
alone.

Credit Jim
Walker and Big Car for making the move out
there when everyone else had given up on the area. But even Big Car will have
its last hurrah at its Service Center location, hosting the first 5x5 event of this season on May 8,
before bugging out on June 1. The Service Center played host to so much
culture, I'll be sad to see it leave. It was such a draw to explore those other
aspects of Lafayette Square.

LSA was planning
for and announced revitalization
plans months before downtown's development announcements. If we get another
Super Bowl, this is where Indy should work on its next Legacy Project. In the
meantime, I guess LSA is a bridesmaid waiting for someone to throw it a
bouquet.